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Aldi is Borrowing Blind Boxes & Drops From Collectibles Culture - Aldi followed with free grocery "blind boxes," releasing a new mystery-themed box daily from June 22 to 25 that sold out in seconds and forced a 5,000-box "encore" drop. Is this entertaining and smart marketing, or negative signal for the consumer economy?

Ricola Launches Non-Cough Citrus Drops? - Facing a steep seasonal slump, the 96-year-old Ricola launched a line of citrus "mouthwatering drops", built for dry mouths and everyday use rather than colds. Ricola USA marketing director Becky Spruck says the aim is acquiring younger, non-sick consumers, and to reach them the brand is opening its first TikTok Shop this summer and sampling at summer festivals and minor league baseball games.

Even Realities Becomes a Unicorn Betting Against the Camera in Smart Glasses - While Meta and Snap chase camera-equipped AI glasses, Even Realities CEO Will Wang is betting on camera-free, display-first frames built around privacy, a wager that already has the company profitable, past 10,000 units sold, and grown from 30-40 staff to 300-400.

Pine-Sol's unhinged TikTok account has done 13 million views on a single post, but only and about 300 orders in its TikTok Shop.

If you think this is a flop you’re reading the wrong number.

Yes, if you judge a viral moment by in-platform sales alone, 300 orders looks like a joke. But Pine-Sol is a hundred-year-old brand sitting on every grocery shelf in the country. It was never trying to win at TikTok checkout. The point was a real halo effect.

13 million views translate to relevance for a century-old cleaner with Gen Z, in second and third-order effects a TikTok Shop dashboard will never capture.

We've seen this movie before: Dr. Squatch's Sydney Sweeney soap campaign sold out at 5,000 bars (a rounding error for their yearly sales) but generated millions of impressions that did the actual work.

An established brand with real distribution can afford to play this kind of long game.

If you haven’t seen Pine-Sol’s TikTok account, you should – it’s platform-appropriate unhinged brainrot in the very best way.

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See you live,
Ecomm Cowboy Team